RETHINKING CHURCH (Part 3)

Recently, Perry Noble’s blog post "It’s Not the Product… It’s the Service, Part Two of Two" caught my attention. I wrote my thoughts about the INSIDE of the church view. Today, I’m going to speak to the “outside of the church” view, giving my commentary on what he had to say.

OUTSIDE of the Church View

“Nope…it’s not enough to just come to church and then go home…what we do outside the walls of the church in many ways is way more important that what happens on the inside. Saying that here are some ways we can take it to the next level in regards to making Matthew 5:14-16 become a reality.

• Teach people to read their Bibles…to discover the reality of Hebrews 4:12, the LIVING/ACTIVE Word of God. A person who learns to hear the voice of God through the lens of Scripture is UNSTOPPABLE!

In order to teach people to read their Bibles the LEADERSHIP of the church need to be reading it themselves...REGULARLY…and I don’t mean reading the Bible for information…but TRANSFORMATION!

• Challenge the church to take care of “one another” instead of hiring professionals to do it all!
• Treat people outside of the church like they have a heart and soul…for example, being incredible kind to the server at the restaurant, DESPITE the “service” that they give. They might have had the roughest day of their life…and the last thing they need is someone wearing a Christian t-shirt and has a fish on their car being a complete butthole to them because their water glass wasn’t filled!

We teach that we should all be living out EXTRAVAGANT GENEROCITY

• SERVE the world we live in rather than screaming at it. (The stupidity of some people in the church who believe lost people should act like Christians still blows my mind!)

Plain and simple: saved people serve people!

• Stop looking down on others who commit “those sins” and realize that, were it not for the grace of God that we would be the very people we criticize!
• Repent of our own sins before we call out the sins in others! (It blows my mind how an obese person can look at a drunkard and try to point out their sin without addressing their own! Whew…that was tense because FOOD has become the idol in the American church that many pastors are afraid to address.)

Ok, Perry got me with this one! But the truth is the truth.

• STOP trying to isolate ourselves from the world that God was so desperate for that He sent His Son to LIVE HERE for 33 years and then gave His life for it!
• Stop trying to win God’s approval through legalistic effort and walk in the incredible grace that HE gives us in Christ.
  The world can try to deny Christ and Christianity all day long…but when a church gets on fire because the people are on fire and we actually do and become what Jesus has called us to do and become…I believe we’ll see an outpouring of God’s favor and anointing like NEVER before.

I'll close with a quote from John Wesley…."Give me one hundred men who fear nothing but sin and desire nothing but God, and I care not whether they be clergyman or laymen, they alone will shake the gates of Hell and set up the kingdom of Heaven upon the earth.”


At LifeSpring Church, we’re trying to love, serve, teach, and develop the “one hundred” men and woman that John Wesley speaks of… disciples of Jesus Christ… are you one of the “one hundred”?